Reflection from Friar Nicholas

OUR LADY, MOTHER AND QUEEN Ezek 43:1-7; Ps 85:9-14; Mt 23:1-12 The Seat of Divine Communion To understand the revealed name of God, I Am, is to understand the infinite power of God. It is to understand that God’s plan can never be thwarted by any creature, for every creature owes its existence to our God. The divine will is the cause of every existence. So, the revelation of God’s plan means it must come to pass. Where the realisation of the divine plan is delayed, it is delayed by its human component, for the divine component is already in existence and operative from the moment of its revelation to us. When the human component is found willing and ready by abundance of divine grace, the plan of God is speedily realised, for there is nothing else to impede it. Abraham’s willingness and faith in God’s promise formed the pedestal on which the whole of the Old Testament, the Law and the Prophets, were established according to God’s plan of salvation for all men. When his descendant...

SAINT PIUS X, POPE Ezek 37:1-14; Ps 107:2-9; Mt 22:34-40 The Knowledge of Divine Love Our life here on earth is a journey to communion with God. As we pointed out in our reflection yesterday, understanding the goal of life illuminates our origin and true identity. God has made sufficient provision for our wayfaring through life to divine communion. Each of us can be compared to a child whose parents left under the care of a guardian and travelled of necessity. They made every provision for the child's upbringing, but placed all in the care of the guardian, who is to raise the child with all the provisions, so that he would gradually grow and come into his inheritance with them. The understanding of the provisions, the care the parents put in place for his welfare and upbringing, and the wealth he is to inherit in due time give the child an idea of his parents' love and goodwill. But if the child pays no attention to these things, thinks only of himself, complains that his...

SAINT BERNARD, ABBOT, DOCTOR Ezek 36:23-28; Ps 51:12-15,18-19; Mt 22:1-14 Attendance at the Divine Wedding Human life on earth is a struggle we must engage in; it is a journey we must make; it is a battle we must fight; it is also a death we must die. Our life is all these and even more. But what makes our mortal life worth living is the end for which we live it. The true end of human life is linked to its origin. If we understand the purpose of life on earth, then we must have grasped our origin. Similarly, understanding the origin of our lives is to receive illumination into the purpose of our existence. Because of the importance of knowledge of these two, God revealed his word to us. God had to do this because the knowledge of these principles or pillars of our existence, which are supposed to come to us naturally from creation, became recondite or hidden due to the darkness and distortion caused by sin. The word of God, which is meant to illuminate our understanding, was neve...

WEDNESDAY, TWENTIETH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Ezek 34:1-11; Ps 23; Mt 20:1-16 Shepherds of God’s Flock We falter many times, mainly because we have failed to understand our relationship with God. We belong to God, and everything we have comes from him. If we all belong to God and he cares for everyone as his own, then we must also care for ourselves and for each other. From these relations, we have come to understand our natural need for communion with God and with each other. The wisdom that comes from awareness of God and our relationship with him enlightens our minds to understand that we come from God and are returning to him. The desire for unlimited life is the natural witness to our going back to God. Our ability to know or acquire knowledge of the universe is a testimony that we come from God, for intelligence, which is the operation of rational light within us, points to the presence of the divine image in us. Hence, by creating us, God continues to work in us through knowl...

TUESDAY, TWENTIETH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Ezek 28:1-10; Deut 32:26-28,30,35-36; Mt 19:23-30 Danger of Self Sufficiency Studies have shown that humans are naturally social beings. No one is made to be an island or to live in isolation. This conclusion is supported by the fact that our needs are many and we can never satisfy them in isolation. So, communities arise naturally as means of satisfying various human needs. If our nature demands we live in communion with one another, even more does it demand that we stay in communion with God. Human experience and studies have also shown that people tend to isolate themselves from others when they acquire material riches, which give them a false or mistaken sense of self-sufficiency. We call it false because material wealth and riches can never take the place of people in our lives. If wealth and riches can not satisfy our need for communion with people, how can they ever take the place of God in our lives? It is delusional and grossly si...

SAINT HYACINTH OF POLAND, PRIEST Ezek 24:15-24; Deut 32:18-21; Mt 19:16-22 Demands of Divine Communion When we speak of divine communion as the goal of our lives here on earth, we should not consider it an event that will happen only at the end of our lives, but rather an ongoing process. It is a process of participation in God’s life. Understanding God as the Supreme Spirit and the Father of spirits, we see our growth in divine communion as through our spirits. The communion is non-existent when we are spiritually dead. When that is our case, we need to be raised to spiritual life again. Only God does such a supernatural feat. All lives begin at the will of the Father, most importantly, the spiritual life. All lives commence in the presence of the Son as the expression of the Father’s will. The Holy Spirit makes each life real and active. Because spiritual death is due to sin or abandonment of God’s holy will, we must come to the Son of Man to receive a new spiritual life. He is the o...

SUNDAY, TWENTIETH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Isa 55:1,6-7; Ps 67:2-3,5-6,8; Rom 11:13-15,29-32; Mt 15:21-28 A House of Prayer for All Peoples We touched on the deep compassion of Saint Paul for his people, the Jews, in last Sunday's reflection. We noted that such self-sacrificing compassion demonstrates a deep transformation of Paul into Jesus Christ. His willingness and eagerness to be cut off or deny his heavenly inheritance in Jesus Christ for the sake of the salvation of his people, the Jewish people, shows the presence of the heart and mind of Jesus Christ in him. For as Saint Paul wrote in Phil 2:5, urging us to let the same mind that was in Christ Jesus be within us; who, being in the form of God, abandoned his Godhead to become a slave for the sake of his brothers and sisters, even to accept death on the cross. Jesus Christ accepted to be cursed to liberate us from our slavery to sin and evil and restore us to the kingdom of his Father in heaven. Hence, in offering to be c...

  SOLEMNITY OF THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY Rev 11:19,12:1-6,10; Ps 45:10-12,16; 1 Cor 15:20-26; Lk 1:39-56 The Appearance of a Great Sign We celebrate the solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven today. It is one of the great celebrations of the Church, for we observe it as a day of obligation; we observe it with observances equivalent to those of a Sunday, the day of the Lord. Such a celebration is the greatest honour the Church can accord to a mere mortal. But the importance attached to the celebration centres on the salvation of man, for the great honour accorded to the Blessed Virgin Mary stems from her unique role in human salvation. The unique importance and honour are what the Church learnt from God himself, through the Scripture. According to Scripture, God had us in mind and planned our salvation even before the foundation of the world. The Blessed Virgin Mary and her Son had a prominent and central place in the divine plan of ...

SAINT MAXIMILIAN KOLBE, PRIEST, MARTYR Ezek 16:59-63; Isa 12; Mt 19:3-12 Freedom to Accept or Reject In our Christian vocation, some things are commanded, and others are given as counsel for those who can take on an extra burden for the love of God and their neighbours. Those things that are commanded are given in the Law of Moses and reinforced by the Prophets. About the things that God has commanded us, there is no negotiation, for they come directly from the nature of God. They constitute the foundation for our communion with him. To go against the Commandments of God is to reject the life he invites us to enjoy through the Law and the Prophets. Our Lord and Saviour made it clear that he did not come to abolish or mitigate the demands of the Law and the Prophets, but to reinforce and fulfil them. Obedience to the Law of God forms the structure of divine life in us. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ gives us a spiritual life and structure to live the Commandments with ease. In...

THURSDAY, NINTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY Ezek 12:1-12; Ps 78:56-59,61-62; Mt 18:21-19:1 The Debt of Forgiveness Saint Paul helps us understand that everything we have is a gift from God in 1 Cor 4:7: For every good thing comes from God our Father in heaven, and there is nothing that comes from him that is bad or evil for us. We are certain of this, because God is Good, and only goodness flows from Him to us. Among his gifts to us, pardon or forgiveness of our sins is among the essential gifts, for it is the foundation of our new life in Jesus Christ. Without the forgiveness of our sins, we cannot receive the life of the Son. Furthermore, the forgiveness of our sins, on which our redemption from evil and death was founded, is not a cheap gift; It cost the blood of the Lamb of God, the Son of God, who became man for our salvation. It is with the precious blood of his Son that the Father purchased us back from our captivity to sin, evil, and the devil. As Christians, we are the redeemed...

WEDNESDAY, NINTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY Ezek 9:1-7:10:18-22; Ps 113:1-6; Mt 18:15-20 The Duty of Reconciliation If our growth in spiritual or Christian life is a journey into Jesus Christ, a gradual transformation into him, then the growing transformation also imbues us with the spirit and duty of reconciliation. The main duty of the Son of Man is to reconcile his brothers and sisters to the Father. Our vocation to follow him also involves our participation in the important mission of reconciling others to God. Any advance in spiritual life that is not marked or characterised by increased longing to speak of the goodness of God the Father, and his Son Jesus Christ, to others is not a genuine and sincere spiritual growth. The urge or longing to speak of God and bring others to know God arises from the sense of gratitude to God for the forgiveness we have received. A deep sense of gratitude prompts us to praise and consecrate ourselves to God; it also inspires us to readily forgive t...

SAINT CLARE, VIRGIN Ezek 2:8-3:4; Ps 119:14,24,72,103,111,131; Mt 18:12-14 Receiving from God the Father We reflected on the virtue of giving ourselves to the Father without fear or worries as a sign of maturity in Christian faith. The same virtue has its other side, which is receiving all that the Father sends to us daily joyfully. This virtue corresponds to the virtue of giving as the other side of the same coin. We must understand that we are not the first act in this regard when it comes to the exercise of these virtues. We are rather cooperators with God. God acts on us first, thereby enabling us to cooperate with his grace, which he gives us in Jesus Christ. God acts on us, both in prayer and in our meditations on his words, to fill us with his grace, which is his presence in us to accomplish his divine will. Jesus Christ is the source of all the graces we need to accomplish the Father’s will. He also reveals the divine will to us. By his Incarnation, he revealed the Father...

FEAST OF SAINT LAURENCE, DEACON, MARTYR 2 Cor 9:6-10; Ps 112:1-2,5-9; Jo 12:24-26 Giving All to God the Father We understand our Christian life as a journey into the knowledge of Jesus Christ. If the knowledge of Jesus Christ is the knowledge of God the Father, it also follows that our Christian journey is a journey into the knowledge of God as our Father. Every knowledge is transformational, even knowledge of physical or natural things. The more we know about creatures, the better we relate to our environment every day. Our belief in God conditions our life on earth, for God created all things by his word. Our scientific knowledge also enlightens our faith and lends more credence to our faith in Jesus Christ. If scientific knowledge transforms us and makes us more enlightened on our Christian faith, our spiritual experience and knowledge do even more. Spiritual enlightenments from the word of God are like food and drink we take to enhance our spiritual growth and development. Th...

SUNDAY, NINTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME 1 Kings 19:9,11-13; Ps 85:9-14; Rom 9:1-5; Mt 14:22-33 Our Consciousness of the Father We hold the revelation of God as our Father as the very core and centre of the whole Gospel revelation from Jesus Christ as our Saviour. This is in total harmony with the divine identity of Jesus Christ as the Saviour of the world. We believe and confess the fact that the Son of God took flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary and became man for our salvation. His purpose in becoming man and dwelling among us is to reveal the will of the Father to us; for the knowledge of the Father’s will is our salvation. At the same time, the salvation of man lies in believing in the identity and life of the Son of Man, who is the Son of God, but now dwelling in human nature. Hence, we say that the mysteries of Christ are the mysteries of our salvation. The two are not different, but have the same contents. The knowledge of the Father is the Son of God; as we conf...